Our friend Brian has posted our recent show at Chicago’s Kinetic Playground on Archive.org.

The set list:

1. Listen to the Mockingbird
2. South Australia
3. Angeline the Baker -> Soldier’s Joy
4. California
5. Short Life of Trouble
6. The Logjam
7. Takeup Reel -> Cold Frosty Morning -> Grey Eagle
8. Trishanku’s Heaven
9. High On A Mountain
10. British Army
11. Little Sadie
12. With a Bottle in My Hand
13. Ginseng Blues
14. Dead Flowers
15. Orange Blossom Special

Download the show here:
http://www.archive.org/details/tweed2008-05-01.cemc6.flac16

It wasn’t a great show — we were plagued by a very bad stage mix and didn’t play or sing particularly well that night. Also, for reasons unknown to me, we wound up sitting around the venue for a few hours until the staff deigned to do a soundcheck, and I hit the stage more than a little annoyed and at a low energy ebb. That said, the venue has a decent sounding (almost acoustically dead) room, and it’s a good-sounding recording. The energy and performance quality started to pick up by the end of the set.

The Stradivarius of mandolins is this Stradivarius mandolin, one of two known examples. It’s in the collections of the University of South Dakota. With ten gut strings and what appear to be oud-like frets, it’s a markedly different instrument from the contemporary mandolin, which is largely based on the work of Orville Gibson.

It’s signed and dated Antonio Stradivario in Cremona 1680, which would place it twenty years into his career as an instrument maker, but still almost another two decades before his ‘golden age’ of 1698-1720.

In addition to mandolins, he apparently made some fiddles.